xxi, 689 p., [16] p. of plates : 25 cm

The first authorized biography of one of the most influential and controversial intellectuals of the twentieth century, based on new research and full access to its subject's papers. Best known as the creator of the classic anti-Communist novel Darkness at Noon, Koestler is here revealed as a man whose personal life was as astonishing as his literary accomplishments. The young Hungarian Jew whose experience of anti-Semitism and devotion to Zionism provoked him to move to Palestine; the foreign correspondent who risked his life from the North Pole to Franco's Spain; the committed Communist for whom the brutal truth of Stalin's show trials inspired the angry novel that became an instant classic in 1940; the escape from occupied France by joining the Foreign Legion and his bluffing his way illegally to England, where his controversial 1943 novel Arrival and Departure was the first to portray Hitler's Final Solution. Scammell also gives a full account of the author's voluminous writings, making the case that the autobiographies and essays are fit to stand beside Darkness at Noon as works of lasting literary value.--From publisher description

Includes bibliographical references (p. [579]-585) and index

Part One: A Long Apprenticeship - The Author as Journalist (1905-1936) -- Chapter 1: Beginnings -- Chapter 2: A Budapest Childhood -- Chapter 3: Rise, Jew, Rise -- Chapter 4: Zionist -- Chapter 5: A Runaway and a Fugitive -- Chapter 6: First Steps in Journalism -- Chapter 7: Hello To Berlin -- Chapter 8: In the Gale of History -- Chapter 9: Red Days -- Chapter 10: Anti-Fascist Crusader -- Chapter 11: Marking Time -- Chapter 12: Prisoner of Franco -- Chapter 13: Turning Point -- Part Two: Fame and Infamy - The Author as Novelist (1936-1946) -- Chapter 14: The God That Failed -- Chapter 15: No New Certainties -- Chapter 16: Darkness Visible -- Chapter 17: Scum of the Earth -- Chapter 18: Darkness Unveiled -- Chapter 19: In Crumpled Battledress -- Chapter 20: The Novelists Temptations -- Chapter 21: Identity Crisis -- Chapter 22: Commissar or Yogi? -- Chapter 23: Return to Palestine -- Chapter 24: Welsh Interlude -- Chapter 25: The Logic of the Ice Age -- Part Three: Lost Illusions - The Author Activist (1946-1959) -- Chapter 26: Adventures among the Existentialists -- Chapter 27: French Lessons -- Chapter 28: Discovering America -- Chapter 29: Farewell to Zionism -- Chapter 30: A Married Man -- Chapter 31: To the Barricades -- Chapter 32: The Congress for Cultural Freedom -- Chapter 33: Back to the USA -- Chapter 34: Politically Unreliable -- Chapter 35: The Language of Destiny -- Chapter 36: The Phantom Chase -- Chapter 37: I Killed Her -- Chapter 38: Cassandra Grows Hoarse -- Chapter 39: Matters of Life and Death -- Part Four: Astride the Two Cultures - The Author as Polymath (1959-1983) -- Chapter 40: Cosmic Reporter -- Chapter 41: The Squire of Alpbach -- Chapter 42: Retreat From Rationalism? -- Chapter 43: A Naive and Skeptical Disposition -- Chapter 44: Seeking a Cure -- Chapter 45: Wunderkind -- Chapter 46: Chance Governs All -- Chapter 47: The Koestler Problem -- Chapter 48: An Easy Way of Dying

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